How about this new tiny CW keyer I bought?

I have been on the hunt for a quality keyer for my Ten Tec Argonaut 5 radio for a long time now. You see, this radio is a bucket list item for me and I finally found one. Well, just like all Ten Tec radios, this one only has a simple keyer, with no memories to record messages like most modern radios today. I really enjoy having message memories to send CQ and even sometimes to send the closing statement at the end for a number of reasons. So enter the external keyer…

So to spoil the outcome right at the start. This keyer is just what the doctor ordered. It worked just exactly like I wanted it to. I love the form factor, the size and especially the functionality. It has so much going on that I had no idea was there, like it has macros… kinda. It has these short hand codes that will call up other memories or repeat information or trigger other functions. One that is really neat is that you can change the keying speed with a command embedded in the memory message, so say your in a contest and you want to send the 599 BK really faster as literally everyone is using this exchange. Then you can add a small command at the beginning to change the speed of the message to say, something like 35WPM, then send the exchange and at the end execute another command to change the speed back to what the knob on the front is set for. This works, I tried it. On top of that, it will do serialized messages too! This little keyer is loaded!

Below is what you get when you buy it. The widget and a slip of paper with the info on where the manual is online. I downloaded the manual and promptly printed it out. The manual is well done, easy to understand and also has the assembly instruction as apparently this can be had in kit form too.

The front of the keyer has 4 buttons and the speed control knob, that’s it. It has everything you need and nothing you dont. Plain as that.

Another thing that I kept going back to was just how small and light it is. It weighs practically nothing and is about the size of a pack of playing cards cut in half… As for the buttons, there are things these do other than record and playback memories. By pressing multiple keys together, you can do all sorts of other things, like go into the menu, or set it for tune up mode where it will send a constant carrier so you can set the tuner for the antenna and so fourth.

The back is even simpler. The sockets are as follows: left to right, The headphone Jack for use as a practice oscillator, the paddle / straight key input, and then the output used for keying the radio. By the way, this thing even auto detects the keying device and sets itself to the right mode for you somehow. That is some serious dark magic right there.

These are the screws you will remove to replace the battery…next year. It is supposed to last that long, we shall see as I plan to use this radio a lot more now that I have a memory keyer for it.

You will see below that I had to adapt the cable going to the Argonaut 5. This is because the output is setup to send to the radio as a straight key. (I am pretty sure my other keyers were the same way and I simply forgot this little fact.) So you have to set your radio to straight key mode and then come up with a 3.5mm mono to 3.5mm mono cable. Well I didn’t have a cable so I used one of my headphone adapters that turns stereo headphones to mono headphones and it went right to work. I will most likely get the right cable pretty soon, but for now this will get me by just fine.

When I had the keyer setup in the shack at home, it performed flawlessly and I was able to get it programmed and used it to chase some DX as well as hunt a bunch of POTA activators before deploying it.

As soon as I got to the park and setup, it went nuts on me. The code had this odd “modulated” kind of thing going on and was unusable. So now what???

Turns out this coax was my problem…well not this coax in particular but the fact that it was so short. You see, the antenna was connected directly to the back of the tuner so the RF was in close proximity to the radio. I speculated that this might be the problem so I got in the support box and found another cable that was longer and spread the radio set out as far as possible. This solved the problem for the most part. I think that some RF choking on the cable going to the radio will help more too.

I also included my common mode choke since this cable is BNC on one end to get rid of that possible problem. This also required me to convert the connector on the radio from SO-239 to BNC.

The radio performed very well at this point and I was able to secure an activation pretty easily even though there was heavy fading with the bands on this day. I could literally hear a 599+20dB station fade to almost nothing while copying the simple POTA exchange. It was really bad at times. If you will notice W8LEO is struck through with a 599 signal report, he called me and I never heard him again, he just vanished.

All in all, I am almost done sorting this little machine out and I am confident it will perform wonderfully on the air for many upcoming activations in the future. It is always nice to take a chance on something like this and find out it is much more than you bargained for. If you want one for yourself here is a link to the website and a screenshot of the eBay listing for reference. Hamgadgets.com Thanks and I hope to see you soon.

July 1 2023 Morning Activation AAR

It was perfect weather and my operating position could not have been better today…

Today started out like any other day… (I have always wanted to start a story like that…lol) I loaded up the radio gear for the day, the Penntek TR-35, a TenTec 277 antenna tuner and a 41’ random wire antenna that I built for my trip to Hawaii last Febuary. (There is a write up about that from back in March if I am right)

I set up the radio today at the canyon rim since I wanted to use a wire antenna and this requires throwing a line up in the trees. I have my favorite picnic table that is right in the middle of the trees and is kinda out of the way of the hikers in the area as well. I throw the line up into the tree and it didnt get very high…uggg… Pull it out and rethrow it, again, and again… FINALLY get it about where I wanted it and ran with it. Not optimal as the antenna was running over some branches at the top but it was arial so I let it ride. I also just tied the throw weight to the line and left it suspended to maintain the tension on the antenna and not have to tie it off. I set the box that I carried my extra widgets in, under the throw line and weight to keep people from accidentally walking into it as it was hard to see and people did occasionally come by. I am pointing to the weight in the photo below…see what I mean?

I bought this Ten Tec Model 277 tuner on Flea-bay for really reasonable money and it is in excellent condition too. I like it as it is made by Ten Tec and it has connections for a coax, balanced line and a random wire antenna on it, this versatility is not on all tuners out there and makes this one really desirable for me. It is a simple design with a tapped coil inductor and two air variable capacitors. The SWR meter was just icing on the cake, I dont use it to tune most of the time, but rather the nanoVNA as it shows the “tune” of the system graphically and makes it easier for me to get done much faster. But what is good about the swr meter is that is the antenna changes or I bump a knob on the tuner or anything like that, it will show me instantly that the system is compromised and needs attention. That is a nice perk to be honest.

I also built out this simple kit for my nanoVNA to keep all the widgets I have accumulated for it, all in one place so I have what ever I need when I use it. This makes operating with the VNA a breeze. The yellow case was something I picked up at a hamfest from Gigaparts for cheap and it works perfectly for this job.

Here is a look at the antenna “kit” that I have put together. i learned a while back that it is simpler to find the things you want if you label them clearly. Hence the flagged counter poise and radiator. Also shown are the throw weight I made in the machine shop and the arborist 2mm throw line I also picked up at Gigaparts in Huntsville AL.

Here is the star of the show for the day, the Penntek TR-35 amateur radio. This radio is CW only and has a strong output setup that is pretty much impossible to damage with several temperature and current over protection circuits built into it. I have made a metric ton of contacts on this radio and today was no exception. Although the log sheet is light on quantity, the ones I did get are awesome! I even got an email from WA6YPE showing me his QRP rig that he called me with using a mag loop antenna in UTAH!!! I was also QRP at 5 watts going to him too. When the bands are “on” it doesnt take a lot of transmitter power to go a long way.

I also made another small goal for this day, I was able to make at least one contact on each band the radio is built to use. It is a personal little goal when I have a tunable antenna like this wire with me. If I am using the hamsticks, I can also do it then but it is more work on my part and a lot of the time I dont want to put out the radials for the other bands and will just use 20 and 40 only since they share radials… lol.

Also of note is that I worked DX for the 2nd day in a row that was not Canada (which I still consider DX for me). Today I was dialing aroudn on 17 meters and found XE1CT calling CQ and he was booming into my radio, so I thought he might just be able to hear me too. I threw my call sign to him and he came right back! Even though it is just Mexico which is actually no further than states like Arizona or Idaho, it still makes me happy to work them. There is just something about making contact with a foreign country that is special for me since I normally only activate with QRP power only.

If you think activating a park is hard, dont let it stop you, it is really fun. I have literally only had one outing where I didnt get the activation and that was my fault since I setup on a little used band, with a QRP radio, on a day when the bands were terrible and did so 45 minutes before the end of the UTC day too. Chalk it up to “giving it a shot” and it was still fun. Most of the time if you will just hop on 20 meters right quick, you can get the activation required 10 QSOs out of the way and then if you want to try to get contacts on other bands or modes or what have you, then at least you know you have the activation in the bag first. Simple tactic but it works perfectly for me.

Some days I am bolder and will set up shop on 17 meters and dig out the activation there before.I go elsewhere, but if I am pushed for time or something like bad band conditions, 20 meters is my goto solution. It pretty much always gets my activation. Just a tidbit if your thinking about activating a park sometime and have not done it yet…

One of the reasons I like POTA

The first picture is one of the main reasons I like POTA. Being out in the field with a portable radio and being able to make a reliable contact with it is just special to me.

The parking lot was almost full when I arrived and fortunately for me, the space I wanted was open! That is me all the way over to the left at the end of the row. The perfect spot to be if others are in the lot as there is no trail here so no one will be tripping over the antenna parts when the come and go.

Today I found I had about an hour of free time and the weather was perfect for a change so I gathered up the gear and went to K-2169 for a quick activation. Since the weather was so nice I opted to setup on the tailgate.

When I operate at home, I am in my “shack” which is actually a spare bedroom I have repurposed for my hobbies. That is the one thing I like and don’t like about it. It is indoors. I like it when it is raining or cold outside but I don’t like it when it’s nice weather outside. This is the biggest reason I like going to Field Day in June, that is second only to the camaraderie with the other people.

Today, since I wasn’t in my regular truck (I commandeered one of my shop trucks while they put new shoes on the dodge) I didnt have my usual antenna kit. So today I deployed the 41’ random wire antenna that I used in Hawaii. I also coupled it to my Icom IC-705 with the automatic antenna tuner as well. This makes band changes a breeze…

I threw a line over a tree beside the truck and pulled the wire up as high as I could and tied on a 13’ counterpoise. The tuner connects to the radio with two cables, a co-ax transmission line and a signal/control cable that is simple a 3.5mm stereo cable commonly referred to as a “AUX” cable. It has two AA batteries in it and works fine with these but if possible I will power it with the main battery I feed the radio with, so I also included a power cable in my harness I made up for it. This harness is 6’ long and allows me to connect random wires right to the tuner.

To lift the burden of the wire tension off of the tuner, I also have a small cord connected to the radio end of the 41’ wire so I can anchor it to something near the tuner. This works really well and keeps me from pulling the tuner off the table when something moves the wire like wind, squirrels or people which in turn would cause damage to my tuner.

Today was a pretty good day too, I got my activation in a fairly short amount of time, I was outside in the wonderful weather and I was able to just play radio a little while. That being said, I netted less than 20 QSOs today with signal reports showing I was not very strong…probably because the wire was poorly deployed and not even all the way.

The key of choice today was once again the Gemini I picked up off of eBay a while back. I have ran into two problems with it since getting it. I also use it a lot as it has a great feel and normally works very well. Issue number one is detailed in a previous blog post where I bumped the lever arms at some point and this shifted the action off center causing it to send dits nonstop. I dismantled the key and realigned the lever arms, which is really easy once you see what needs to be done. The second happened just the other day during an activation. I got all setup and started to call QRL and it was just sending trash. I couldn’t get it to send anything correctly at all, just a mess of dits and dahs with no coherent outcome. So I fell on the backup, the N6ARA key and it saved the day. Once back home, I took the key apart to find that the center ground post that the contacts touch when keying, had worked loose and it was about to fall out. It has one small screw that holds it on the base plate and I simply tightened this screw and it was back in business. The lesson here is to have a spare key with you…fortunately I had one and was able to get the activation.

Looking at the map, we can see how the radiation pattern started about 700 miles away probably due to my terrible antenna deployment, but people were still able to hear me so that is all that mattered. lol…

Do you have any tales from the outer planets that relate to anything like what has happened here? If so, let me know in the comments. I look forward to working all of you on the air at some point.

72 de WK4DS

A bunch of POTA activating in one day.

The sunspots were being nice to me today with my tiny ham radio and CW key…

The amateur radio of choice for today is the Penntek TR-35

Well I went to a bunch of parks today. It wasn’t planned, I just found myself in the right areas to be able to get to several parks in one day, so Carpe Diem! I found out later that I only needed two more to get a rover award so now it is on! The first level is 5 parks in one day. The goals go up from there to insane numbers of parks. I am convinced that at the peak levels, you have to operate mobile with vehicle mounted antennas. You just dont have time to activate 20, 25 or even 30 parks in a single day otherwise. It takes me ten minutes to get into the park, stopped and just get the antenna deployed then just as much time to break it down. So all that wasted time has to be eliminated. It would have to be a military style operation to be honest, having someone log for you too if you wanted it to go easily, but 5 or ten should be easy enough…right?

Back to what happened today…

I first made a short stop at my local haunt of K-2169 Cloudland canyon state park. Then I spent the mid day with the family and doing some chores. I wanted to get in an activation before I went to father/daughter brunch and was able to do that with ease. Unfortunately, I had to leave the activation before I wanted to, as there was a decent pile up going and I really don’t like to leave anyone hanging…but the kiddo was waiting for me so off I went.

This parking lot is literally at the bottom of the mountain.

I ended up at the foot of the mountain this time as it saved me a solid 20 minutes of driving by not going to the top of the mountain. This allowed me to stay on the air a little longer and added about 15 QSOs to the log because of it. Signals were strong even with the mountain right beside me. I was honestly impressed with how strong a lot of the ops were on my ham-stick. I used 20 meters as I wanted to be sure to secure the activation in the time frame I had, which was only about 30 minutes from the time I powered the radio on. This is why I didn’t goto the top of the mountain, the drive up there would have eaten all the operating time. As you can see though, the inbound signals were strong and I got a lot of good reports back as well. This location isn’t all that bad to be honest as long as there is room to deploy the counterpoise wires.

Later in the day, after brunch with Sierra (KK4RJW), I was near Harrison bay state park so I figured I would try to get another activation before the day drew to a close. (I was also working on a youtube video for my photography channel and wanted somewhere fairly quiet to record it and this sounded like a good spot). During the weekdays these parks are normally ghost towns and I usually have free reign of the place. This is why I like them for recording video content.

The park is home to a really nice marina and boat ramp and I chose to setup in the far corner of the parking lot where the boat trailers are parked. There was plenty of room here for my radials so no one even gave me a second look. I opted for the 17 meter band as I wanted to see what I could do with it and I wasn’t under the time constraints like I was earlier in the day.

I noticed a lot of these trees were blooming at this time too. I think these are called red bud trees, but to be honest, I am not sure. They sure were pretty though. So I thought I would grab a quick photo and add it to the blog for color.

Since I was wanting to record the footage for my video, I stopped calling CQ after I got 15 QSOs in the log. I always like to go over by a couple so that if I find out I copied a bad callsign, I still have enough for an activation. This one went a little slower since I did the whole thing on 17 meters and didn’t bother to change bands during the activation. You see, right now, to change bands involves me going to the rear of the truck and changing whip antennas as well as the counterpoise wires as these are all tuned independently. I will eventually build the mount that holds 2 or three of these at once (maybe all four) and I will retune the radials to work with all of it set up at once. I checked the ham-sticks and they have unreal selectivity with there being only one resonant null on the nanoVNA across the whole spectrum up to 30mhz. There aren’t even any harmonic bands, just the one they are tuned for.

Well on the way back from Harrison bay, I drove right past Booker T Washington state park…so I said to myself “Self, we should activate this one too” and with that I swung the truck around and went back to get 10 more contacts with the TR-35 and my newly minted ham-stick collection. Turns out this was a good call as you guys came in the clutch! Wow! FOURTY QSOs in short order!

I got there and setup near the playground on top of the hill. These are old campsite spaces that the park no longer uses for camping. The parking spaces are still paved and the grill is still at most of them so people still use the sites to do cookouts now. This in turn makes them perfect POTA parking spots as I spoke with the park ranger and he said it was perfectly fine to setup in these spaces and play radio anytime the park is open. As you can see below, it makes for a great location and there is plenty of room for the radials if I back into the space.

The radials dwarf the ham-stick antenna but the sure do work well.

This time I chose the 30 meter band to start with and then changed over to the 20 meter band to finish up as I was getting a lot of calls from this location. Doing the band change is not really that bad but it is slow enough to make you not want to do it a lot. I think the multi mount for the antennas will make this a great all day rig where I will setup for several hours and want all four bands.

Signals at Booker T Washington park were strong today!

I have figured out how to get the radio to rest on the dashboard of the truck so that I can free up more space on the armrest for the logbook. If fits here perfectly and allows me to connect the headphones and key with just the right amount of room on the wires. It also gets the VFO knob out of the way so I don’t bump it and push myself off of frequency (which I have done in the past). It is still in a location that I can access easily though for speed changes, memory access and such.

Below is my “POTA tote” that I was gifted at Christmas last December. It holds all my POTA stuff and a bunch of extra things too. The tote almost has two complete rigs in it at this point there is so much redundant gear in it. But it is convenient and I can just grab it and goto a park as the ham-sticks live in the truck full time now in a pvc storage tube I made for them (see photo below). I keep them, the trailer hitch mount and the radials all in the back of the truck together so they are ready to deploy when I arrive on location. Easy.

After a good little run of QSOs on 30 then another one on 20 meters, I cleared the pile up and called QRT to go find the wife and have some supper. Little did I know at the time, but I was over half way to a Rover accomplishment. I now know that I only needed two more parks to get the first level award in that and I already know which two I am going to use… LOL So next time I will get my 5 in one day.

Thanks for following along on my little CW adventure in ham radio. 72 WK4DS

A “quickie” POTA activation…lol

What happens when you plan to do something “right quick”? That’s right, it doesn’t happen like that at all. Haha.

I had about an hour of free time today between activities with the XYL and K-2169 was … technically… on the way to meet her, so LET’S POTA!

K-2169 Cloudland Canyon State Park is a 15 minute drive from my house so if you look at that park on the POTA site, you will find I go there a lot. Today, I wanted to get setup quicker than normal, which means I opted for the lower parking lot. This parking area is next to the canyon proper and is where I like to setup my wire antennas in the warmer months.

The lower lot was pretty sparse so I was able to get in a corner, out of the way, which also afforded me the ability to use the side of the truck to shade me from the setting sun. I grabbed a camp chair out of the back of the truck, threw up the 17m hamstick and got on the air. The truck tire made the perfect “table” for the Penntek TR-35 QRP radio too. I used the battery to tie down the coax so it would not slide off the truck and pile up on me (like it did right before I sat the battery on it) and made the station nice and tidy.

I started on 17m calling CQ as I heard quite a few stations having QSOs. After calling CQ for a few minutes I got an answer from NA7C in Utah and then a little later KJ7DT came in strong as well from Idaho. But then I called for a long time with nothing coming back so I decided to change bands and see if I could finish up on 20 meters.

Once on 20 meters, I found a clear spot and started calling CQ again. Just a moment later KJ7DT came back again! This time even stronger!!! Idaho was booming into Georgia today. That gave me hope! So I worked Paul leisurely, as he was the only one to answer my call, and then cleared him to find myself in a ginormous pileup! Where did everybody come from!?!?!? Good Lord I had trouble pulling out single stations. I have never really had to deal with a legit pileup before. Oh sure, I have had 4 or 5 stations call at once but this sounded like 20 or 30! I start plucking out callsigns and in the process of the next 38 minutes I put 38 QSOs in the log. That has to be some sort of a record for me!

Some items of note from today that I found interesting were that I worked KJ7DT back to back on two bands without coordinating that with him, then I ended up working three DX stations today with one of those being DL1AX in Germany, another was VO1SW in Canada and finally CU3DI in the Azores! I even worked a Park to Park for a 2Fer! Sweet! Speaking of sweet, the dogwood trees are in full bloom as well making for a beautiful scene on top of a 40 QSO run on my tiny little QRP radio in just under an hour and that includes an antenna change!

Check out the QSO map I got from the HAMRS app showing the spread. Side note about HAMRS, if the op isn’t found in the Hamdb database, then search them on QRZ and get their grid square and add it to the QSO info if you want them to show up on the QSO map. This is how I get non-POTA ops to show up.

Here is the USA map without the tags so you can see the radiation dispersion of my 5 watts and a hamstick antenna.

I think that I could have most likely worked most of these ops today with SSB and it would have been successful. 20 meters was that strong today. This comes on the heels of the previous evening where I worked Ian in New Zealand on 10 meters via greyline! This has been a good 24 hours for radio! Confirmed via QRZ in real time no less! I am sending him a real QSL card anyway but that always gets me excited. It isn’t everyday that I can even hear New Zealand on 10 meters much less them hear me.

Here is another tidbit about me. If at all possible, I will always clear the pileup before going QRT as I know some of them are needing my park for one of their goals and if I can help them with their goal, whatever it might be, I want to do that. I had not initially planned on staying for an hour but it was so rewarding that I just couldn’t power down the rig. Lol

Today was a pleasant surprise and I look forward to more like it in the future.

72 and I hope to hear you on the radio!

de WK4DS

My new travel CW key failed on its third POTA outing...

This key was supposed to be my solution to poor performing keys…well, today I was 16 QSOs into a POTA activation and the little key suddenly started “ditting” nonstop. I power down the rig, take a look at the key and find the “dit” lever is pushed over against the contact arm on the key.

In this photo you can see the “dit” lever shifted to the center.

As you can see below, somehow the lever is off center and not returning anymore. so I shut down the op and packed up to go home and see what happened. I needed to do some other chores as well so I made the decision to take the key home to where I had a better assortment of tools to be able to repair it…if possible.

Once home I took the key down to my workshop and removed the cover assembly to reveal how the key is made. I found a ultra simple design that is efficient and minimalist in nature. This also makes for a clean layout and an easy to trouble shoot system. The lever arms dont have any springs of any kind, but rather the lever arms have been thinned just ahead of the mounting block enough to allow them to flex easily over to the contact arm. Simple and elegant.

Below I am pointing out the contact that is shorted. The key is upside down here, but you can see the contact pad touching the center column. This doesn’t make sense as the arm is not broken nor is anything seemingly out of alignment.. The key worked perfectly up till this point too, so I looked very closely for a crack in the arm, but it isn’t broken at all, in fact it looks perfect.

What I found upon closer inspection is these screws I am pointing out below are in oversized holes drilled in the block. It appears this is done on purpose to allow for centering of the lever arms in the housing once assembled. Simply loosen these two screw and turn the block till both levers are equally spaced from the center contact arm, then retighten the screws and your good to go.

Here is my conclusion. I must have bumped the end of the lever I am pointing at in the photo below, as this is the only way to shift the block off it’s axis. By hitting the end of the paddle arm I could feasibly transfer enough energy to the block to shift it. By just pushing the levers in the normal travel directions it cant do that as the frame has hard stops in place to prevent it from over travailing. So at some point I shifted my key in my hand or bumped it into something in the truck to cause this failure. In other words, I did something to it, I really don’t know what I did, but I must have hit it on something. I works perfectly now as I took it to the QTH and got on the air with it this evening and worked several POTA contacts and I plan to redeploy it on the next outing. Time will tell if I am too rough handed or if this key will become my defacto travel key.

So if you get one of the CQ Gemini keys, just keep in mind that it is a great key and wonderful to use, just be sure to protect the end of the paddle arms from bumping into stuff and it will work for a long time. When stored, this is a non-issue as the paddle is completely inside of the metal housing and cant run into anything. I can still recommend this key for a travel key, I just learned something about it today that I wanted to share with all of ya’ll.

Like and comment on here and let me know that you like my blog posts, it goes along way towards growth of my website and I really apprecitae it.

72

David

WK4DS

ARRL Amateur Radio Field Day 2022 After Action Report from a CW op.

Well that fateful day has come and went, fun was had, radios were used and new skills were learned.

I want to thank Ms. Dana K4GCA, for hosting us on her property so graciously, this made the whole event feel so much better. You see, this is our first field day without her late husband Brian (K4GC) who passed away unexpectedly last year. We miss Brian dearly and it made this field day even more special to be allowed to operate the site from his back yard.

This was the first year I have been to a field day event in many years. A lot of new faces have came onto the scene since the last time I did field day with the K4SOD amateur radio club. It was good to see old faces as well as the new ones and to put faces to call signs is always a good thing.

Roger KG4WBI brought several radios and antennas and proceeded to build a huge antenna array on a push-up pole to connect his Ten Tec Argonaut to via hamstick dipoles. I had to leave before the system was built completely and go to church for the evening but when I came back I went back over to the site to operate some CW on the air..

Once things got underway, they setup the SSB station in the back workshop and got to work. Ricky W4EMA getting on the air here on Roger’s KG4WBI Alinco DX77T HF rig while Steve KI4WJG waits his turn at the controls. Thanks to KK4IJR Kevin for many of the photos in this article, but somehow we didnt get a single image of him!!! LOL

It is strange how CW will draw a crowd I did not think most people enjoyed it but it was a huge conversation topic the whole time I was trying to work contacts. The guys were truly interested and it surprised me. I was looking around trying to find contacts with the Argonaut but since it only has 5W of output power it was very difficult to get through the band QRM and make a contact. I spent the better part of almost an hour trying to make five contacts, it was very different from the parks on the air style of operating.

I finally gave in and we used Josh’s KN4RTY Yeasu 891 to up the power output and to get through and make some contacts. At this point my confidence was boosted somewhat and I was able to get back on the Argonaut and it’s five watts of output power and make a few more contacts with it before I called it quits at 2:48 in the morning local time(5:48 UTC).

Getting to use the Argonaut was a special treat as those radios have been out of production for many years maybe even decades at this point. Roger had went to the trouble of having this radio professionally tuned, aligned and cleaned so that it would be in pristine operating condition for the night. Ten Tec transceivers are amazing radios especially for the CW operators. They seem to specialize in that type of radio communications with their transceivers. If you really enjoy using CW in my opinion, you really should look at Ten Tec and Elecraft radios, these radios excel at that mode. Now don’t get me wrong, all amateur radios, pretty much, work really well with CW. It is just a subset of all the amateur radio operating modes so don’t think you have to have a certain brand of radio to use CW, I just prefer Ten Tec radios.

I decided to take two different CW keys with me to the field a side. One was my straight key I made some 20 years ago but since we were using it on the Argonaut 2 I had to change the cable to an RCA cable to be able to connect it to the radio. The other key was my serial number 1 “prototype” WK4DS paddle and I love this key greatly so I put it in a waterproof hard shell storage box with some closed cell phone to protect it during travel. These two CW keys are my primary keys that I use when I work outdoors or sometimes indoor operations. I have others as well, but these are my favorites.

My logbook is a mess! I would get the call first then get their exchange info before even calling them, this way i could listen to the exchange and just confirm what I had written down already. This made code copy at such high speeds much easier for me. You see, I am kinda slow at copy right now… lol…

It was a really good time and I really enjoyed meeting with people that I had not seen in a long time it makes me realize how great this community really is. If you have not gotten out and interacted with the local hams in your area I highly recommend it. Until next time get your radio out and go make a contact with it will see you later 73 WK4DS

Back to K-2169! I get the luck of the draw and the bands cooperate!

Well, it has been a week since I activated a park so I had a few hours this afternoon and a charged battery, lets POTA!!! So I grab my bag and head over to Cloudland Canyon State Park and my usual spot has people in it and they looked like they were going to stay a while so I went to my second location of choice and it was all clear! Got the antenna up on the first throw this time! The sloper was facing 55 degrees NE to the high end without a single branch near it! I strung out the 20 meter wire for a counterpoise and hooked them to the tuner, antenna done! Cranked up the radio right at 20:00 UTC and I started calling CQ on 12 meters for nearly 15 minutes with zero replies! So I moved down to 15 then to 17 where I pounced on XE1XR in Mexico to start things off right. Not hearing much else, I go to 20 meters and literally find every HAM that has ever turned on a radio! Yeah, 20 was open… so I found me a spot and started calling CQ. I didn’t have good internet today for some reason so I sent my friend KV9L a text and got him to spot me, but then the reverse beacon took over after that I think because in 19 minutes I had garnered 15 QSOs and making this trip a valid activation! Well I didn’t stop there as I still had plenty of time to play radio so i kept calling and you guys kept answering. I logged KG5CIK at 20:51 UTC and moved to 30 meters for a minute to see what I could do there. I ended up with 6 QSOs on 30 meters then hit 17 again but no one was there and then finally back to 20 to finish out the day. Got a couple of park to park QSOs this time as well as K9IS whom I log almost every trip out and CU3AA in the Azores! I am always amazed at what just a few watts of rf can do! That was a good trip for me today, ended up with 37 QSOs in just at 2 hours time. That has to be some sort of record for me, I am sure of it. lol…

Compass I use is from my iPhone and it works pretty well as it also has a bunch of other data from the location as well. This is the direction the high end of my sloper was facing with it hanging at close to a 30, maybe 35 degree angle. Compare that to the QSO map for propagation reference info. I like this simple kind of research, alot of it is not documented, but I think it is enough to give me an idea of what I can do with the antenna when I string it up.

I overlayed the compass onto the qso map to see what it was doing and the results are kinda cool to see visually.

Using this tiny little travel key takes some practice as it is not super easy for me to master, it works really well but it is very small and I am used to large heavy bench keys that sit by themselves and do not require two hands to operate, this is what I am talking about. The key itself performs VERY well. I really like the little guy.

If you will notice, my logbook contains only CW contacts today, this is because of two things, for one, I love using CW. For some reason I have always enjoyed using this mode on the air, even though I am not very good at it… and number two, nobody could hear my calls on SSB today. I think it takes a little more than 10 watts to bust through a pileup… lol. I do get some SSB from time to time and plan to try some RTTY and FT8 as well in the future…once I learn how.

Thanks for your time and 73

de WK4DS

Got something magical in the mail today from my POTA radio time!

When you embark down the road of ham radio you learn a lot of history as part of the journey.. A little piece of that history is QSL cards. QSL cards are super interesting to me as I am pretty sure it is one of the only times that a person involved in an activity will go to the trouble of documenting and sharing that documentation with the other involved party to confirm it happened. A QSL card is usually nothing more then a post card with the contact data on it, sometimes mailed like a post card sometimes in an envelope. Then there are “nicer” cards that will have photos on them, but the ones I REALLY like have personal hand written notes on them. Those are the best to me. If you are active in radio very much on HF at all, you will end up with at least a few of these in your mailbox. The usual courtesy for me is to reply to all cards I get in the mail, I once actively sent cards to all my contacts that I made, but I no longer do that due to the costs involved, but I will always reply to one sent to me…always.

I find it charming to keep this tradition alive, but it can get complicated too, before you throw your card in the mail, be sure to check to see how the other op handles their QSL cards, there are several ways to do it , just so your aware. Most of these are done to help either save time or money and sometimes the DX station will have rules as well as sending a “green-stamp” to offset return postage or an SASE to help them with the expense of sending those exotic cards over seas.

Since I have been out of radio for sometime, I am honestly needing new cards. I think I will go with photo cards this time and not add any special logos so they will translate to all types of radio like voice modes and even digital.

Customizing your QSL cards doesn’t have to be a once and done thing either, I have routinely made custom QSL cards in the past by just doing some photo editing and then printing photos and writing the QSL info on the back. I would always mail these in envelopes as I didn’t want the post office sorting machines abrading the photos. But this is just one way to make the card, you can literally write a letter if you wanted to… The rules are not set in stone here.

I always enjoyed getting these kind of “shack” info letters, it was always interesting for me to see what the other op was using when we made contact. Sometimes it would be a 10,000$ power house machine and sometimes it would be a homebuilt rockbound radio that cost 25$.

Yes, we had a QSO and he was transmitting with 250 milliwatts! The note about the contact is below.

So I hope if your new to amateur radio that you will consider sending some cards out and going the extra mile and personalizing them as well. Have some fun with it! That is what it is all about anyway!

Tough conditions, dead batteries and a lot of amateur radio fun.

This is a tale of a guy who thinks he is going to get a “quick” POTA activation and then go grab some photos as well… It didn’t go like that…at all.

You see I thought I had this whole Parks On The Air thing dialed in and have even built a little “kit” to activate parks with that I can just grab and go. I am repurposing an old camera bag (a story for another day) and it organizes the QRP rig perfectly for activations. Soooooo, this is how it goes on that fateful day. I have a few hours in the afternoon on June 8th 2022 and tell the wife I am gonna “run” over to Cloudland Canyon state park and get a quick activation and then be back in time for supper with the kids later. I grab said POTA bag, hop in the truck and head over to my spot to activate K-2169.

Well, I should have heeded the warning when I got there I guess as my favorite location on top of the hill was occupied with a group of teens on a day trip from a local school. I circle through the parking lot really slowly surveying the area and decided to park for a bit and see if I could figure something else out when I catch a break! They start packing up to leave!!! So I wait patiently for them to vacate the location I want to use and once clear, I move the truck and grab my gear.

Setup was frustrating this time as I had to throw my line 7 times to get a good location like I wanted (turned out later that really didnt seem to matter, haha). I FINALLY get the line up in the tree and then hook up the radio and we are off to the races! Well, I was off to the races, seems nobody could hear me. It took several minutes of calling CQ to get my first contact. Normally once I get one, then I will end up with at least an activation (10 contacts) within about the next ten minutes. Not this time, it took a full ten minutes to get the next QSO in the log! So then I figure I would go hunting some other parks and I did get one then another! NO! It was a SOTA op that is didnt hear well… lol. Well after that I got my hopes up again as I got a run of 5 in about 25 minutes. As I would be just about to give up and try something else, I would get another one and it would keep me in place a little longer. So I am an hour in and only have 8 contacts at this point, I need 10 for a technical activation, so I REALLY want to get two more before having to shut down the operation. It was at this point that I realized why I was getting the 339 reports…THE REMOTE BATTERY WAS DEAD!!! I’m thinking at this point. Really doofus, your brought a dead battery to an activation??? Well, yeah, I did… So I am now running on the battery that comes with the 705 which will only produce 5 watts output. I can hear stations but they cant hear me… I head over to 30 meters and bag N3VO for the 9th QSO in the log, it is basically time to break down the rig, but I need one more contact to have an activation, so I go back to 20 meters and switch to SSB, after trying to get through 4 pile ups without no success, I score a park to park on my last QSO of the day and get my 10th contact securing an official activation. This one was close, but I made it, I quickly broke the rig down and headed home…

So if you think you cant make it work, there is almost always a way to do it, even if you have a dead battery and the bands are terrible for QRP and you have to switch modes, you just might get it done.

73

WK4DS